ELAINE QUEHL, Quilt Artist, Teacher, Dyer, Designer

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Everything's Blooming & Major Website Update

A couple of days ago I headed out to the Canadian Tulip Festival, which takes place in Canada's capital city (my city!) every May. Although the tulips were beautiful, I found myself a little bored photographing them. Perhaps because I have photographed them many times before? So here are some requisite tulip photos..

I remembered that I had once seen magnolias blooming not too far away, at the Ottawa Arboretum, around this time of year. Much to my delight, I found five different varieties. I believe this is the first time I've found them in yellow.

Most were pink, either a deep fuchsia such as these

or a pale delicate pink such as these.

A pink-tinged white was also in bloom,

as well as an almost-pure white.

I did not find the green-tinged white that was the inspiration for this quilt, "Forgiveness", that I made in 2009. Looking at it now, there are things I would change and improve about it, but that is to be expected since it has been nine years since I made it.

This was the inspiration photo.

A bit further along down the road, the apple blossoms were in bloom. I already shared two photos in my last post. They have not peaked yet. At peak, they form a long row of pink down Prince of Wales Dr.

Next to autumn, this is my favorite time of year. Without winter, how would we ever appreciate the beauty of everything that is coming back to life?

I hope you are enjoying a beautiful day. It is a long weekend in Canada in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday. While we have not been under British rule since 1867, we are still a Commonwealth country.

Yesterday was cloudy and rainy, so a perfect day to finish a substantial website update I'd been working on for a few days. Here it is! www.elainequehl.com

Most of the changes relate to my Gallery of Quilts, where I added five new galleries. I've included all the new works I've made over the last three years. You'll find that some galleries only have one or two quilts, but the fact that I felt they warrant a separate Gallery is because I am planning on adding more work in those series.

I can see some pictures of the Lower Mainland here. It was wonderful when you were here in Surrey to show our guild and teach at the Fraser Valley Quilting Guild. I really enjoyed your class, and in the end the quilt I made turned out perfect thanks to you and your teaching Elaine. Thank you so much for inspiring me. To see my quilt you can go to http://quiltinglikeamaniac.blogspot.ca Take care.

Nicole, I really enjoyed my time in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver afterward. While it was a bit rainy, it was so beautiful to see everything come into bloom a full month earlier than back home in Ottawa, and I missed the ice storm! We only now have the blossoms you had in April. I am happy you enjoyed the workshop and finished your piece. I went to your blog and see it hanging on your kitchen wall. Well done!

Your posts are important to me. Due to a huge amount of SPAM on my blog recently, I have decided to moderate comments, at least for the time being. Please be patient, your post will be approved as soon as I can get to it.Elaine